Glare-free forward illumination has become an important goal to improve night driving safety for vehicles. Automotive headlamps with patterned beams have been proposed to dynamically illuminate the field of view. In some applications, the headlamp beam pattern may be modified based on data from a variety of sources, including forward looking sensors, indicators or beacons located on the roadway, with positional or traffic data from GPS receivers, or even attitude sensors. Headlamp systems using dynamic beam adaptation potentially enable a number of applications, such as: glare-free high beams; pedestrian face masking; animal spot lighting; target painting; reflection reduction; vehicle attitude compensation; adaptive front beam steering; and projecting information on the roadway